Legislators walked into a fire storm of controversy as the annual session opened last Tuesday.

AEA members calling from across the state joined AEA staff in making clear to legislators that radical education bills, HB84 and SB54, would disrupt education and could strip educators of tenure, the salary schedule, and every benefit earned by educators.

Although the Senate and House committees had public hearings on the bills, members of the House Education Policy Committee scrambled to adopt some amendments that put some employee benefits back in the bill, and calm the outrage among educators.

Even with amendments, due process rights could be tossed aside with ease under the legislation and AEA is asking members and the public to voice opposition to HB84 and SB54 in their present form.

AEA’s Executive Secretary Dr. Henry Mabry characterized the flexibility legislation as a back door for charter schools, an abolition of employee rights, a device for for-profit schools, and a return to the political patronage in place in the 1930s.

“Some legislators are rushing to shed their responsibilities by giving local school boards and the state superintendent the right to opt out of almost all state laws,” Mabry said.

The Montgomery Advertiser reported in a recent story, that much of the language in the flexibility bills mirror language in the charter school bill that failed in 2012.